Wednesday, November 2, 2011

971. Randy is back to his old favorite punching bag of homeopathy in this one! Before I read the alt text, I didn't catch that it was meant to be a jab at homeopathy and figured it was meant to be a satire about anti-consumerism in the key of Cake's "Rock 'n' Roll Lifestyle", which I could have gotten behind.

Then I read the alt text. I don't think Randy has ever more explicitly spelled out what a comic is about, or why he is writing it, in the alt text before. That's a lot of text for an alt text. And then you go back through and read it and it becomes clear that this comic is just another boring, lazy strawman attack on proponents of homeopathy. I don't think this even counts as pandering, but that may just be because I can't bring myself to give a fuck about it.

972. Here's what's happening here. I had to get someone to explain to me why this comic exists, because originally I thought 'surely Randy can't think that being aware of your tongue is that annoying, can he? and even if it is, it's not worth a comic, surely?'

How wrong I was.

Anyway, what's happening here is Randy read this Peanuts comic and decided to copy the joke more or less in its entirety, then, as an Original Twist, he declared that November would be tongue awareness month. That way once you know that you'd spend the whole month being aware of your tongue, and then you'd forget about it as soon as December rolls around. Just like how during breast cancer awareness month, Randy's only thoughts were of breasts and the milky bounty they contain, during tongue awareness month, your only thoughts will be of tongues.

BAM! Month ruined! How d'you like that, you fuckers?

I don't think I need to explain how mind-numbingly stupid this whole 'if I tell you to be aware of your tongue for a whole month, you will be' thing is. It's dumb. It's very, very dumb. This joke is dumb. This meme is dumb. Even the forumites are calling this the worst one of all time. Why the fuck would you intentionally release this as a comic?

See, Randall's not only doing a homage to Peanuts. He's also playing with that "awareness month/week/year" thing that has become all the rage of the past decade or two, not to mention giving his readers another opportunity to brag about how obsessive compulsive they are. He's one-upping Mr. Schultz, working on multiple levels at once, thinking outside the box while working within it. This is what comics as they are supposed to be, bitches.

Okay, the whole breast milk thing? It's so overdone at this point that its inclusion in a given review is more boring than any actual xkcd strip. The fact that this site continues to flog this decayed horse carcass of a joke says more about the contributors here than it does about Randall. It's predictable, it's tedious, and frankly, its overuse single-handedly undermines all your (otherwise legitimate) complaints about Randall's own overused memes and recycled jokes. Please let it go.

The previous poster's got it right (4:15). As much as xkcd does suck, this blog is only slightly more entertaining. Most criticisms that Rob goes out of his way to formulate on xkcd, can pretty much be equally accused of his own lame humour.

Gotta congratulate Rob on his epic trolling here. His dedication would be admirable if it weren't so pointless.

Nobody could be that dumb, to assume the intentions of the writer and get so offended by them. So I figured it was cognitive dissonance. But then I kept reading. Trolling is the only possible cause for this blog.

I think the last ten years of The Simpsons sucked, but I don't write a blog picking apart every little detail, assuming to know what the writers were thinking and projecting my feelings of superiority on them.

say some people believe a stupid thing, like the earth is flat. then you make some commentary on how dumb it is. finally, several flat-earthers accuse you of strawmanning because you ridiculed a slightly different version of the flat-earth theory than the one they hold dear.

whatever any particular person believes about homeopathy, or god, does not change the fact that a very large number of people believe in "medication" with zero active components, or in a bearded man who literally created the world 6000 years ago.

calling "strawman" out on that is like a nazi calling out "strawman" on Schindler's List because he happens to hate asians more than jews.

November 3, 2011 5:16 AM, I agree with you. He creates a whole character ("Randy") and then bludgeons him. Funnily enough, among other things, he accuses "Randy" of using strawman attacks. Go figure...

cptnoremac, you either have unforgivably bad taste or are too young to know any better. The Simpsons peaked in 1996 and has gone consistently downhill since then. There hasn't been an episode that could even reasonably be called "good" since 1999.

The joke of 972 is that Randall spent so much time online, that he has became unaware of his vital body parts. So he was unjustifiably annoyed when his roommate reminded him that he did indeed have a tongue.

yes and no. i didn't read the comic at first (just took rob's word for it). I see the peanuts comic more of just linus being the utter failure and fuck up that he is. the joke in the peanuts comic seems to be more of the fact that linus' failure is so complete that he infects lucy and she too becomes a failure (for the moment).

I don't see the peanuts comic as a reflection of shultz's view of tongues. i DO see randy's abortion (and/or aberration) as a reflection of his own views.

and i generally do lose respect overall for shultz because he even brought it up at all.

Um, no, the early episodes are horrible and unrefined. If you laugh at Homer choking Bart for the 50th time more than at Flanders asking permission to borrow his own chainsaw Homer stole, then I feel sorry for you.

Morons, the Simpsons was only really good for the first three or so seasons. The episode where Homer is ashamed of his family, the episode where Bart ruins thanksgiving, the episode where Bart is wracked with guilt for receiving accolades when he cheated in an exam... this was the era of The Simpsons written for people with an attention span. This was when we really could consider The Simpsons an adult cartoon.

Another tantalising hint as to who the White Hat Guy truly is. Apparently he's old enough to not possibly be considered part of the MTV generation, which Randall has handily calculated for us as something over 40 (if he was younger he would have figured Megan to be lumping him in with them), and his opinions are always wrong.

White Hat man comics boil down to "the trouble with old folk today" rants.

973 is a comic that starts off making a clever point, and then goes nowhere. The punchline is useless, and the alt text is terrible. It's just another way of saying 'Gee, can you believe how much time has passed since [X]? Doesn't that make you feel old?' and it's not even done well.

Surf the random goatkcd's for awhile. A lot of them are hilarious. The one panel comics become pictures of goatse with awesome captions. The multi-panel comics suddenly end on a punchline, a punchline that actually feels like it fits in the comic better than the intended one.

It's absurd that jamming goatse into anything would improve it, but it's the best thing to ever happen to xkcd.

You know, just for fucking once, I'd like to see an xkcd where a female is wrong about something and a male corrects her. Why the hell are women always the more intelligent ones in xkcd comics? Other than because Randall is desperate to portray himself as a feminist so he can get some pussy?

Okay, the whole "stop with the Megan jokes" thing? It's so overdone at this point that its inclusion in a given comment section is more boring than any actual xkcd review. The fact that this comment section continues to flog this decayed horse carcass of a complaint says more about the contributors here than it does about Rob. It's predictable, it's tedious, and frankly, its overuse single-handedly undermines all your (otherwise legitimate) complaints about Rob's own overused memes and recycled jokes. Please let it go.

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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